Henry Louis Gates: [Django Unchained] is an opposite extreme of The Birth of a Nation. Did that play a conscious role in your mind? Reversing the depiction of slavery that The Birth of a Nation registered? Quentin Tarantino: Yeah, you have to understand, I’m obsessed with The Birth of a Nation and its making. HLG: […]

On this day in 1975: Black hecklers prevent David Duke, a little-known Ku Klux Klansman from Louisiana, from speaking at the University of North Carolina’s Memorial Auditorium. Chancellor Ferebee Taylor calls the incident “a transgression of one of the highest and noblest traditions of this institution.” Duke will go on to form the National Association […]

On this day in 1966: The same day that Martin Luther King Jr. addresses without incident a crowd of 4,500 at Raleigh’s Reynolds Coliseum, Ku Klux Klansmen in boots and helmets jeeringly remove blacks from a Klan rally at Nash Square. The incident will force Gov. Dan K. Moore, who has tried to treat the […]

On this day in 1958: Lumbee Indians, upset about two recent cross-burnings near their homes, break up a Ku Klux Klan rally in Robeson County. Klan leader James “Catfish” Cole planned to speak on “Why I Am for Segregation,” but the program is cut short by gunfire, firecrackers and teargas grenades thrown by sheriff’s deputies. […]

On this day in 1928: At the request of American Legion officials, Durham police remove a Ku Klux Klan float from line in the annual Armistice Day parade. The float bears the letters “KKK” and two white-draped figures representing “Purity” and “Honesty.” “Since our post is composed of men of all classes and all religious […]

“While black victims of the Klan had no hope of justice, most white victims had little more. Indeed, ‘through fear or shame,’ few of the Klan’s white victims reported to legal authorities…. “A North Carolinian opponent of the Klan later explained that much of its support derived from a public consensus that the whites ‘they […]

“For their crusade against the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina, Editor Willard Cole of the Whiteville News Reporter (circ. 5,007) and Editor Horace Carter of the Tabor City Tribune (circ. 1,500) won a Pulitzer Prize this year, the only one ever given to weekly papers. “Last week Editor Cole was praised from another quarter…. […]